The Carrier and the Content.

AMOEBA, another marvel of engineering, but this time one not aspiring toward being alive. Now we can write our names upon the water, and not be overly Keatsian about it. Anyway. What is this doing here..? Well, it illustrates my ideas about the carrier and the content very well.

In the last post I talked about a TV:

"None of the components of a TV are individually alive. But, together, in orchestra, they support a picture, a story, the content of which has very little to do with the mechanics of the device supporting it."

But this device - comprising about 50 small wave generators acting on a common medium to form a standing wave of meaningful content - acts as a much better analogy to our own situation.

Standing waves occur all over the place in nature as well as science - a wave at equilibrium that seems to stand still, even though water, or whatever other medium in which it occurs, is constantly passing through it. For example - on the beach:
Anyway, before we get carried away with the pretty pictures, let's imagine the sum total of our remembered experiences as the pool in which the letters form in the picture right at the top, and the differing areas of the vast network of neurones in our brains as the series of wave-generators around its circumference.

Anyway, the important thing to remember is that though the wave-generators act to create and support the central symbol, they have no inkling of its meaning. They only blindy fire as they are programmed to do according to whatever external force - in the case of AMOEBA a human programmer - supplies the directives.

This is a crucial divide I think - though the entity we take for granted, our ever-lovin' selves, our "I", our persona or wtf.ever term you prefer, is initially generated by our neurophysiology, indeed constantly supported and lent a sense of continuity by the mechanics of the brain throughout its functional lifespan, the nature of that central symbol - In AMOEBA's case an 'S' but in our case an "I" remains somehow other, aloof, like the plot of a story copied out perfectly over and over by someone who cannot read.

ie. The generator, and the generated are separated, by barriers of comprehension/meaning if nothing else, however intimately they may be emeshed.

One last picture:



The pile of rubbish on the floor is just rubbish on the floor. The arrangement, to the eye of our 'I' looks random, no rhyme or reason to it. Just as from viewing a brain floating in a jar you can in no way discern the persona it once projected.

Meaningless, just as 'we' are meaningless to the skeins and tangles of the indivdual neural nets that in concert, throw us forth.

But shine a light... And suddenly, there we are.

...Continued...